all is bright
by queendementor
Summary: the barebone family christmas isn't quite what it should be. can mary lou's mother turn things around for them?


**all is bright**

_a/n: there's still time to avoid this. just click the "back" button on your computer/tablet/whatever and you won't have to look at this. it will work, i promise._

For most families, Christmas is a joyful occasion. It brings a sense of togetherness, of the magic of the holiday season.

But though Jeanne's arms were laden with presents and treats, as she stood in the doorway of her daughter's house on Christmas morning, her first thought was, "What's gone on in here?"

Garlands of peas hung from the walls. Her daughter's leaf machine, Ivan, wore a hat and a mitten, and was in the process of eating the other one. Dozens of tiny stockings hung by the fireplace, and on adjacent walls when more space was needed. Near the Christmas tree, Chastity swept shreds of paper away from a pile of baby peas.

It seemed the usual cheer that went hand-in-hand with Christmas was absent inside. The children didn't smile, they merely stared at the pea decorations. And Mary Lou was too busy trying to get Ivan to regurgitate his mitten to care.

But that was what Jeanne was for. Whenever things were at their worst, it fell to her to make everything better.

Though she usually wasn't left with so little to work with.

-x-

As always, Jeanne made sure to greet her grandchildren, wishing them a very merry Christmas, before surveying the situation.

The baby peas were all clothed in new sweaters, the blues and reds vibrant even from their position on the floor. But Jeanne didn't notice anything for Credence, Chastity, and Modesty, save for what she had placed for them next to the tree.

She knew it was too much to hope they had simply already put them away.

"Mary Lou!" she admonished, momentarily pulling her daughter's attention away from Ivan, who, feeling rejected, spit a leaf at her. "You go to all this trouble for _vegetables, _but it never occurs to you that the children might want to open gifts on Christmas morning?"

"Mother, please, the baby peas need those sweaters to keep them warm," Mary Lou told her, picking up a warm baby pea as if trying to prove a point.

"And the children don't? I can see their wrists in those sweaters of theirs, Mary Lou!"

"They just got new clothes a few years ago."

If not for their company, Jeanne might have gone off on a tangent, reminding her daughter for the thousandth time that the children deserved better than new clothes every few years, and that peas were not more important than human life, but she held her tongue. Credence, Chastity, and Modesty already faced enough screaming and yelling, and she didn't want to add to that.

Sighing, Jeanne said, "Go on, then. Go play with that leaf contraption of yours. I'm sure that's also more important."

After she managed to shoo Mary Lou and Ivan out of the room, Jeanne turned to the children. The three of them glanced curiously at the small pile of gifts she had set down for them.

"Are these for us?" Modesty asked.

"Of course they are," Jeanne told her. "Go on, open them."

-x-

Once the gifts were opened, the children sat around the table, eating slices of lemon cake that Jeanne had brought. To avoid losing it to Ivan's insatiable hunger, Credence wore his new scarf, and Modesty's doll was held in her lap.

Chastity joined them after she swept up some fallen decorations. Apparently Mary Lou had gone for her stash of pea moonshine after Jeanne shooed her away, as she had attempted to become a pretzel tree topper just as the children finished opening their presents. With a bit of help, Jeanne had removed her from the tree and deposited her in the rocking chair with a blanket and an order to behave herself, but two ornaments and a pea garland had still been lost.

"Thank you for the gifts, Grandma," Credence said. "It's nice to have a new scarf. I just hope Ivan won't eat this one. He swallowed the last one while we were out leaf caroling."

"Leaf caroling?" Jeanne raised an eyebrow. "What is that, Credence?"

"It's when we go door to door and sing carols about leaves," Modesty said plainly, as if this was something every family did. "Ivan always comes with us. He likes to sing."

"He also likes to eat Credence's mittens and Modesty's sleeves," Chastity added. "And my hair."

That much was true. Although he was willing to eat almost anything, Ivan's favorite foods were forks, blueberries, and Chastity's hair.

This information earned a sigh from Jeanne. "Leaf caroling and that leaf contraption eating everything," she noted, her tone disapproving. "That's no way to spend the holiday."

Perhaps that was true, but now was not the time to think about that. This moment was a pleasant one, spent away from Mary Lou and devoid of peas. What good would it do to dwell on the other times?

After a short while, Jeanne rose from the table, expressing a desire to check on her daughter. "But I'll be right back," she vowed. "You just stay there and finish your cake."

But when she entered the room, it was to find a much less expected sight. Mary Lou wasn't there. Nor was she in any of the other rooms, a search confirmed.

Which meant she was undoubtedly outside, forcing upon everyone the miracle of Christmas leaves and pretzeling on every street corner in sight.

With an exasperated sigh, Jeanne returned to meet her grandchildren. "Collect your coats," she told them. "I'm afraid I'll need you to come with me."

-x-

Credence, Chastity, and Modesty felt the cold biting into them as they followed their grandmother down the street. She had asked them where Mary Lou usually went when she got drunk and decided to take a walk, but there was no single answer to that question. The last time she had gone to Central Park to pretzel in the freshly fallen leaves, and another time she had tried to hand out frozen peacake until Credence and Chastity finally managed to drag her home.

In the end, finding her wasn't difficult. She'd only made it around the corner and down the street a bit before collapsing in a pile of leaves. However, tracking her to an exact location was the least of their worries.

Mary Lou was so preoccupied with the leaf angels she was making that she didn't seem to notice that her children stared at her quizzically (either that or she was just too drunk to care.) She also failed to notice Jeanne was there until it was too late to avoid a lecture.

"Mary Lou Barebone, you pick yourself up immediately!" Jeanne ordered.

When her daughter made no attempt to stand up, she sighed and politely asked Credence to help her pull Mary Lou into a standing position. Immediately she swayed and reached for her leaves, looking at Jeanne as if she had personally offended her.

"I'm sorry if I've upset you in some way, but that doesn't change the fact that I told you to stop drinking."

At this, Mary Lou simply threw a handful of leaves into her mother's face, glancing up at her and proceeding to drool down the front of her dress. With an exasperated look, Jeanne tuned to her grandchildren, all of whom looked profoundly embarrassed.

"Let's just get her inside," Jeanne said. "I'm sure she'll feel better, as will you once all this is over,"

Unfortunately, nothing with Mary Lou was ever that simple.

With Credence and Jeanne supporting her, the family began their walk home. All was well for about the first half of their journey. But it was about halfway through that Mary Lou realized she didn't like this at all.

Without warning, her hand shot out and closed around Credence's belt, trying to yank it off. At once Jeanne tightened her grip on her daughter, insisting she unhand her son, while Credence just hoped his pants would stay up in the ensuing chaos.

Frightened, Chastity made an attempt to step away, but she found herself in the same predicament as Mary Lou turned to her in pursuit of the belt she didn't wear. It wasn't hard to prove she simply didn't have one on her person, but Mary Lou didn't give up on trying to find one until Jeanne forcibly restrained her.

"Grandma?" Modesty's voice cut through the sudden silence.

"I almost have this taken care of," Jeanne responded, releasing her daughter for a moment to face the little girl. "Don't you worry, Modesty."

Still, glancing down at the sidewalk, Modesty's frown only deepened. Confused, her grandmother followed her gaze, though it became much clearer as soon as she did.

During Jeanne's momentary distraction, her daughter had partaken in one of her favorite drunken pastimes, twisting herself into a pretzel. Well, she usually twisted into a pretzel. This time, the pretzel failed and looked more like a ball.

Observing all this, Jeanne came to a decision. "Go on home, children," she said. "I'll deal with this."

-x-

While she said she'd be home almost directly behind them, it took almost an hour before Jeanne half-rolled and half-pushed Mary Lou through the front door. Ivan greeted them with a flurry of leaves as she deposited his wife next to him.

"Maybe you can talk some sense into her," she told the leaf machine as she exited the room.

Once she was satisfied that Mary Lou wouldn't need her undivided attention for a bit, she entered the kitchen to find Credence reaching for a gingerbread cookie, but looking around furtively as if he'd be skinned alive if anyone found out.

"You can have a cookie, Credence," his grandmother assured him. "So long as you save some for your sisters, you can have as many as you like."

She could have sworn she heard a sigh of relief as the children crowded around the cookie plate, each taking a few apiece.

"In fact, I think I'll have one myself," Jeanne said, taking a cookie and turning to sit beside them. But she was only halfway into her seat when the sound of something shattering was audible.

"Really, Mary Lou?" she sighed. "Can I not leave you alone for five minutes?"

She returned to the living room just in time to see what was going on. As she watched, Mary Lou took an ornament from the tree and launched it across the room, where it hit the wall and bounced away into the hallway. The first ornament lay shattered against the wall.

It occurred to her to simply let it be and hope her daughter eventually tired herself out. She even began to turn around and return to the kitchen. But before she made it out of the room, she heard, "Grandma, what's going on?"

And that was when Mary Lou noticed Modesty's presence and threw an ornament at her face. It hit its target, leaving a red mark on the girl's cheek.

When Jeanne tried to intervene, Mary Lou threw another ornament, this one landing a bit too close to Ivan. The leaf machine immediately ate the small green ball, but soon after made a noise they all recognized as meaning he was about to begin to nausea.

As if fired from a gun, the ornaments shot out of Ivan and rolled all over the house. An ornament flew into the kitchen and landed in Chastity's lap. One landed atop the peas in the toilet, and another splashed into the moonshine in the bathtub. There were even two to be found in Modesty's bedroom, landing neatly in the pile of leaves at the foot of her bed. Mary Lou seemed strangely amused by the whole thing, as if this was all just a show put on for her entertainment.

As the bewildered Modesty and Jeanne looked on, it all came to a sudden end as Ivan regurgitated the last of his meal. An ornament hit the wall, then ricocheted and hit Mary Lou in the head, striking in such a way that she fell to the floor, unconscious.

-x-

It took a while to clean everything up. There was spilled moonshine to clean up, ornaments to either be put back on the tree or swept up before anyone stepped on them, and a leaf machine to feed so it wouldn't be in the way.

At first Ivan was content to eat the corner of the blanket Jeanne had left over his wife, whirring softly in contentment as Chastity swept around him. But when she got a little too close, he immediately spat the blanket out and latched onto the broom.

"Here, Ivan," Modesty, seeing the battle between the leaf machine and her sister, said. She knelt beside him and held out her hand, an offering on her fingertips. "Do you want this?"

Reluctantly, Ivan decided to eat the gingerbread man she gave him. Muttering her thanks, Chastity returned to her sweeping.

With the leaf machine fed, it didn't take much longer to clean up the mess. Once the regurgitated ornaments were picked up, all that remained was a small brown pile next to Ivan. Credence turned to see him spitting out gingerbread men, each one a perfect copy of the one Modesty fed him.

He chanced a look at Mary Lou. She didn't show any signs of waking up anytime soon.

And then he picked up one of the cookies and placed it between Ivan's rollers. He was soon rewarded for this treat with ten more cookies.

"What are you doing, Credence?" Modesty inquired, propping her mop against the wall as she came to stand behind him.

"I'm feeding Ivan," Credence explained. "If you put a cookie in, he'll spit out ten more."

That was all the incentive she needed. The youngest Barebone sat beside her brother, allowing Ivan to make more gingerbread men than Jeanne had even brought with her.

-x-

With all the cleaning done, Jeanne finally allowed herself a moment to truly survey the scene before her.

Credence sat at the table with another slice of lemon cake, his scarf wrapped around his shoulders. On the floor sat Modesty, puzzling over a name for her doll as she ate her seventh cookie in as many minutes. Between them, Chastity read the book her grandmother had gifted her, a leaf set beside her to hold her place.

Despite the fact that all three children now had secret stashes of gingerbread men, Mary Lou was still unconscious in the next room, and Ivan had taken to firing leaves in an attempt to wake her up, it seemed the children had still managed to find a peaceful moment after the events of their Christmas.

She came to sit opposite them, a smile on her lips.

Because in the end, it seemed the magic of the season had found the family after all.

-_end-_


End file.
